The president is setting aside his new war in the Middle East, carnage at Homeland Security, and a prospective GOP bloodbath come midterms to convene an urgent roundtable on a matter of grave national concern—namely, the state of college football.
President Donald Trump has pencilled in a summit for Friday afternoon, when he plans to meet with powerful MAGA-aligned athletes and sporting figures, likely to discuss long-running troubles at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the Washington Post reports.
Trumpy golf champion Tiger Woods, media bigwigs at ESPN and Fox, former coaches, and representatives of the “Power Four” college football conferences are expected to attend.
The newspaper reports the event has been billed as a “College Sports Roundtable,” though experts say “Olympic sports and women’s athletics [are] unlikely to command much attention,” given the profile of confirmed attendees.
It comes amid lingering uncertainty over the future of the NCAA, which otherwise controls most rules governing college athletics, and which has been repeatedly weakened over the past decade by court rulings challenging limits on athlete pay and policy shifts allowing players to profit from their name, image, and likeness.
Trump already has a packed schedule. Last weekend, he launched ongoing attacks against Iran. His administration has now, somewhat confusingly, determined that the measure was intended to protect U.S. military assets from retaliation in the event Iran came under attack. It is one of several justifications for the unauthorized war.
The Middle East is in chaos. Hostilities have since spread to Europe and South Asia. Oil prices spiked, and markets continue to reel as investors scramble to insulate themselves from disruption to global supply with vital trade corridors in the region shuttered amid the violence.
Six U.S. service personnel have died. The State Department is instructing American citizens stranded in the Middle East to leave via commercial flights, which are currently grounded with most, if not all, airspaces in the region shut down by the ongoing exchange of fire.
“Presidents have conducted other business even when wars are happening. But this promotion of a college sports summit certainly doesn’t seem a priority at a fraught moment when the Middle East is in an explosive situation—and U.S. actions are at the center of this situation,” Princeton University professor of political history Julian Zelizer told the Post.
The president’s Friday athletics summit also comes amid carnage at the Department of Homeland Security following Thursday’s ouster of Secretary Kristi Noem. Her tenure finally buckled under the weight of successive scandals, including the fatal shooting of two American citizens by ICE agents in Minneapolis earlier in January and a $220 million ad starring Noem.
Zelizer added in comments to the newspaper that college sports is also not “the kind of priority domestic issue, like inflation, that matters most to voters right now.”
Polls have consistently shown the GOP faces a bruising battle to retain control of the House and Senate at November’s midterm elections, with most voters now blaming Trump for the country’s ongoing financial woes and even suggesting they would trust a Democratic administration to better handle the economy.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
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